The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokémon and Beyond—The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World (23 page)
Authors: Steven Kent
Galaxian
was more difficult than
Space Invaders.
Rather than marching in straight lines across the screen, the alien ships in
Galaxian
swooped down in changing formations. Though its profits were only a fraction of the money brought in by
Space Invaders
,
Galaxian
was one of the most successful games of its time.
In those days, the [
Space Invader
] games became exceedingly popular in Japan, to the point that people were just going crazy over [them]. As their popularity began to wane, we introduced
Galaxian.
I must say that
Galaxian
was a far superior game.As you will recall, the
Invader
game was black and white, and it has vertical and horizontal movements only, whereas
Galaxian
was in color and the enemies attacked from various directions. So it was a significant improvement over the
Invader
game.—Masaya Nakamura, founder, Namco
Distributing games created by Namco and other foreign partners, Midway challenged Atari’s leadership in the arcade market.
Atari responded with
Missile Command.
Dave Theurer had just finished
Four-Player Soccer
when a team leader named Steve Calfee suggested he make the game.
Missile Command
was based upon an old game called
Missile Radar
that Nolan had seen before he started Atari. In that game you tried to intercept missiles before they hit your base. We always brought this up at brainstorming sessions.—Steve Bristow
Calfee called me into his office and said, “Dave, we have something we want you to work on next. We want you to explore the idea of the U.S. being invaded by the USSR. We want your game to have this radar screen that shows missiles coming in.”
I walked out of his office and my spine was tingling because I just had this feeling that this was going to be fun and it was going to be hot. It was so relevant—that was in the middle of the Cold War.
I just had this really, really good feeling about it.
—Dave Theurer
Theurer, a relatively mild-mannered person who had to struggle to stay interested in
Soccer
, fell in love with the idea. Though he was known throughout the division for constantly editing and re-editing his work, he managed to finish
Missile Command
in approximately six months. Theurer had to make only minimal alterations to get the final version of the game ready for location tests.
I just sat down and drew up a basic game idea, which is pretty much the way it turned out, except we got rid of the radar screen because that was too distracting. I hate radar screens because you can’t see what’s going on half of the time.
—Dave Theurer
The finished game was fairly simple. Players launched missiles from three silos to protect six cities located at the bottom of the screen. The silos had limited numbers of missiles, so players could not waste them by shooting wildly. Once the missiles ran out, players had to sit and watch their cities explode.
Missile Command
was controlled with a Magic 8-ball–sized trackball similar to the one used in
Football.
It was the perfect controller because it enabled players to move the aiming device quickly and accurately.
The game began with missiles appearing like streaks in the sky above the player’s silos and cities. Players launched defensive strikes by firing their missiles in the path of the oncoming threat. As the game progressed, enemy jets and UFOs flew across the top of the screen and dropped clusters of warheads and an occasional bomb. If players were unable to hit enemy aircraft before they launched clusters, they’d have to waste shots mopping up.
We added railroad tracks between the cities and missile bases. The cities were manufacturing the missiles and shipping them on the railroad tracks to the bases. If the incoming bombs blew up the railroad tracks, the missiles were stranded.
It was all too complicated and we figured that it was going to confuse people, so we threw all the railroad track stuff away.
We had submarines for a while, but we decided that it was confusing, so the submarines went.
We were going to have a localities-option for the operator to set the machines to for the east coast or west coast or middle America. Then we’d label the cities according to where they were. But that got to be too complicated.
—Dave Theurer
One day Theurer came up with an idea for creating an enormous explosion. When players lost their last city, he would make it look as if the entire screen had been destroyed by an atomic blast. When Calfee saw the explosion, he suggested putting the words
The End
in the middle of it.
One lunchtime I had this urge to try something cool—I could make this huge explosion on the screen. So I just whipped it up one lunch hour. Steve Calfee walked through on his way back from lunch and said, “Why don’t you put ‘The End’ in there?”
So I stuck it in.
Everybody liked it. The explosion made it into the movie
Terminator II.—Dave Theurer
Space Invaders
was an outrageous hit, but it was nothing compared to the one that was to eventually become the icon of the video game business; and that was
Pac-Man.—Eddie Adlum
Pac-Man
was the invention of Toru Iwatani, a young pinball enthusiast who joined Namco shortly after graduating from college in 1977. Iwatani wanted to create pinball machines, but Namco was only manufacturing video games. As a compromise, he created
Gee Bee, Bomb Bee
, and
Cutie Q
, video pinball games that reached the United States in limited quantities.
*
Namco released
Bomb Bee
and
Cutie Q
in 1979, the same year
Galaxian
was released in Japan.
In April 1979, Iwatani decided to try something other than pinball. He wanted to make a nonviolent game, something female players might enjoy. He decided to build his game around the Japanese word
taberu
, which means “to eat.”
At that time, as you will recall, there were many games associated with killing creatures from outer space.
I was interested in developing a game for the female game enthusiast. Rather than developing the character first, I started out with the concept of eating and focused on the Japanese word
“taberu,”
which means “to eat.”—Toru Iwatani
Iwatani was assigned a nine-man team to convert his concept into a game. The first thing he produced was the character Pac-Man, which was a simple yellow circle with a wedge cut away for a mouth.
The actual figure of Pac-Man came about as I was having pizza for lunch. I took one wedge and there it was, the figure of Pac-Man.
—Toru Iwatani
The next step was to create Pac-Man’s enemies. Since the game was supposed to appeal to the female audience, Iwatani felt that the monsters had to be cute. He settled on colorful “ghosts” that looked like mop heads with big eyes. The maze, dots, and power pills came next. It took just over a year to produce a working prototype of the game.
The idea came up in April 1979, and the project team was put together in May. Location testing was a year later, in May of 1980. A private showing was done in June of 1980, and in July the game went on sale.
—Toru Iwatani
The final game was exceptionally simple. Players used a joystick to guide Pac-Man as he swallowed a line of 240 dots in the maze. Four ghosts swept through the maze as well, trying to catch Pac-Man. The player lost if the ghosts caught Pac-Man before he cleared all of the dots.
There were two ways to earn bonus points in
Pac-Man.
The first was to eat fruit and objects. Cherries, strawberries, bells, keys, and other objects appeared near the center of the maze at different intervals. Each time players cleared the maze, the value of the fruit increased.
The other way of earning bonus points was to eat the ghosts. There were four large dots, or “power pills,” located near the corners of the maze. When Pac-Man ate the power pills, the ghosts turned blue and Pac-Man could eat them for a brief time.
Around Namco, the reaction to Iwatani’s game was not terribly enthusiastic. Namco produced four games in 1980. While
Pac-Man
was generally recognized as a promising game, most executives preferred
Rally-X
, a similar game in which players maneuvered a race car around a maze, collecting flags while avoiding other race cars. The other Namco games that came out in 1980 were
King and Balloon
and
Tank Battalion.
I did not imagine that
Pac-Man
would be an international hit of the magnitude that it was and is to date. People know
Pac-Man.
People who don’t even know about video games know about
Pac-Man.
So, no, I didn’t realize that it was going to be the hit that it is.—Masaya Nakamura
Before Namco showed
Pac-Man
to Midway, one change was made to the game.
Pac-Man
was originally named
Puck-Man
, a reference to the puck-like shape of the main character. Nakamura worried about American vandals changing the “P” to an “F.” To prevent any such occurrence, he changed the name of the game.
When Midway president David Marofske saw Namco’s four new games, he thought
Rally-X
was the hottest prospect.
There were actually four pieces that Namco was showing at that time. Of the two best games, one being
Pac-Man
and the other one being
Rally-X
, I sort of thought that
Rally-X
was the favorite.—David Marofske, former president, Midway
Buyer and analyst response at the October AMOA show further confirmed that
Rally-X
was the best game in the group. Of all the video games at that show,
Rally-X
received the most favorable comments.
Once they hit the street, however,
Pac-Man
quickly overshadowed
Rally-X.
More than 100,000
Pac-Man
machines sold in the United States. Several companies published
Pac-Man
strategy guides.
Pac-Man
appeared on the cover of
Time
magazine, inspired a hit song, and translated into a popular Saturday morning cartoon show. Some arcades purchased entire rows of
Pac-Man
machines.
The video-game industry changed in the wake of
Pac-Man’
s success. Before
Pac-Man
, the most popular theme for games had been shooting aliens. After
Pac-Man
, most games involved mazes. Arnie Katz, editor and founder of
Electronic Games
, the first magazine about the industry, called these games “maze chases.” Soon there were maze chases involving mice
(Mappy)
, eyeballs
(Eyes)
, penguins
(Pengo)
, fish
(Piranha)
, even a personified fire hydrant that slurped up water and spat it at bipedal flames. Like Pac-Man, the heroes of some of these games were relatively helpless. Other games, such as
Targ
and
Eyes
, were tank battles set in mazes.
The video-game business quickly became a wildly lucrative enterprise, and arcades grew to be as common as convenience stores. Hotels replaced gift shops with arcades. Grocery stores placed video games near their entrances. Some doctors even placed games in their waiting rooms.
To reflect the growth in the video-game side of the business, the Music Operators Association changed its name to the Amusement and Music Operators Association.
Despite the success of his game, Iwatani never received much attention. Rumors emerged that the unknown creator of
Pac-Man
had left the industry when he received only a $3,500 bonus for creating the highest-grossing video game of all time. They were untrue.
I don’t recall receiving anything special, although I am told that I received some recognition in my semi-annual bonus.
—Toru Iwatani
According to Namco president Masaya Nakamura, Iwatani received a very small bonus—less than $3,500.
Maybe he received some bonus but nothing really to write home about. He did not leave the company. He now performs a very important function within our R & D group. He’s the general manager.
—Masaya Nakamura
In Japanese business, summer and winter bonuses are considered an important part of the overall employment package. Japanese employers seldom award bonuses to employees for performing the work they were hired to do. Iwatani’s next game,
Libble Rabble
, did not create much of a stir in Japan and was never exported to the United States. Shortly after the release of
Libble Rabble
, Nakamura promoted Iwatani to manager of research and development as a token of respect.